Susan Livingston

Webmaven

There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all

The People section of PANinA is separated into two sub-sections: In Memoriam and Mentors and Colleagues. Each landing page is an alphabetical list of clickable names of the bios therein – except for mine, which follows.

My academic background is in environmental psychology (the psychological effects of built environments) and developmental psycholinguistics (first language acquisition), and I am retired from a career in education followed by one as an entrepreneur. I have led a rich and varied life, and I am told that I have wisdom. I have been married and divorced twice; I’ve been joyfully single since the late ’80s. I’ve lived in 10 states and 3 countries, and I’ve traveled in 45 states and 10 countries. I have two sons and five grandsons.

I care deeply about the state of humanity and our relationships with each other and with our planet. I self-identify politically as a nonviolent anarchist and spiritually as a pantheist. I seek to live in harmony and balance with all of creation, yet I recognize the gift at the heart of conflict. I believe that the greatest challenge facing humanity today is learning to work and play together with people we don’t like, aka embracing diversity and building UNintentional community.

I have been active with Transition Initiatives and with Occupy/Decolonize Oakland since their respective inceptions, but I distanced myself from the latter when the G.A. voted to end negotiations with City Hall. I co-founded the Facebook group Occupy Together Activist Support in the first week of October 2011. I distanced myself further from the movement when the media turned it into just another protest; Time Magazine’s declaration of The Protester as Person of the Year was the deal-breaker for me. But I was active with both Occupy the Farm (Take Back the Gill Tract) and Open University at Occupy Cal. In the winter and early spring of 2012, I attempted to establish Occupy Community conversation cafe style events in the common room of my building in Berkeley, California. Later that year, I co-founded a weekly Crop Swap together with the local Transition movement.

Re-localization is a deep thread that weaves through all facets of my life and work, especially since I stopped driving in March 2011. During my five-year California sojourn, I studied Nonviolent Communication with BayNVC, Sacred Economics with Charles Eisenstein, Social Permaculture with Starhawk, the Work that Reconnects with Joanna Macy, and Shamanic Breathwork with Star Wolf. I participated in Birth2012 with the Shift Network, and I was active with the Evolver Network‘s Hive Mind and with East Bay Food Not Bombs. I’m a lifetime member of the HeartMath Institute and participate in their monthly Global Coherence Initiative. When I returned to southern Appalachia in late 2014, I certified with the Pachamama Alliance to facilitate Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream, Step Number One on the Up to Us Pathway.

My current vocation is Sequitur, a podcast I founded in May 2016 that evolved from the global extreme weather segment on Exinction Radio, which I inherited from Ivey Cone at the start of 2016. During Extinction Radio’s four-month hiatus, Sequitur expanded to provide witness to extinction events for the whole Web of Life, not just when they involve property destruction and loss of human life or livelihood as a result of extreme weather events triggered by anthropogenic climate disrupton.